Belinda Cavendy
Dame Belinda Cavendy is the Chief Historian of the Vault of Ledgers of Daggerfall. She was born into a minor chevalier family and is now an eminent scholar and polymath. Appearance Belinda Cavendy is a small, round, roly-poly sort of woman, at least a head shorter than most people she deals with, even with her thick-soled clogs and flyaway hair adding a good few inches. Every charcoal lock twirls off in its own special way, with little regard for style or comportment. With beady blue eyes, button nose and tiny mouth, her rosy full-moon face can seem almost too large for the features it is charged with holding. Skills In her capacity as Chief Historian of the Vault of Ledgers, Belinda is required to know a great many things. She is a librarian, a bookkeeper, an academic, a peerless curator. Polishing, restoring, sorting, accounting and generally defending Daggerfall's countless records and relics is her natural state. In her own right, however, she is also an eminent scholar, maintaining whole shelves of her own scholarly works alongside the countless treasures of the vault. Equipment She is not much for personal appearance. Her typical style of dress is patchy at best – plain dresses, either repaired or half-finished, topped with shawls and sashes to no particular effect. Topping it all is a clunky golden necklace of triangles and eyes. She potters about with the aid of a simple ashen walking stick and, when doing fine-detail work, has been known to employ a clunky and exotic Dwemeri spectacle-type device. She retains ownership of the third or fourth-favourite family weapon, the Axe of Leland Cavendy, a two-headed waraxe of fine craftsmanship and dubious use in the hands of a Chief Historian of the Vault of Ledgers. Background Dame Cavendy is the daughter of a minor Chevalier family from somewhere in the Ilessan Hills. As such, she was obligated, at least for a time, to enter the family business of riding a horse and swinging a weapon. She was, however, not much cut-out for the job, and was quietly decommissioned by her father in her mid twenties. Her entrance into academia is somewhat confusing to the observer. In 3E 418, after some time in obscurity, she became a teaching fellow at the prestigious University of Gwylim (contemporaries disagree on the faculty in which she taught), but by 3E 425, accounts tell she was a lowly schoolmistress in an Illessan village. Over the next few decades she appeared in dozens of academic institutions and more banal occupations until, in 4E 21 she emerged, an accomplished polymath, as Daggerfall's new Chief Historian of the Vault of Ledgers. Personality Belinda takes her work very seriously, but if a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, her desk is all but out of sight, so heaped it is with tomes and ledgers, scrolls and artifacts. She has chronic difficulty in sticking to her projects or studies – she will pursue them ferociously until something else distracts her. These projects may then lie dormant for months or years, un-thought-of, until the Historian happens upon her notes and is instantly converted back to her forgotten cause. Perhaps because of this, she treasures every scrap of scribble-filled paper, and in a librarian's manner is incredibly protective of her innumerable intellectual charges. Belinda may not be magically-inclined, but her contacts are numerous, and with a little dabbling and considerable hard work she has acquired a swarm of trained hunting spiders. Her little guard spiders prowl the shelves, pouncing on silverfish, beetles and cockroaches in defence of Dame Cavendy's realm. But protective as she may be, she does not hide her charges away. Belinda is a dedicated follower of the cause of learning, and enthusiastically promotes proper access to the Vault of Ledgers wherever possible, unless of course you have greasy fingers or bad academic manners. Character Summary One of the finest scholars western High Rock, Dame Belinda Cavendy is a fountain of knowledge, albeit a somewhat disorganised one. She lurches from project to project as intellectual fancy takes her, and has done so productively enough to fill a sizeable shelf of her own in Castle Daggerfall's Vault of Ledgers. As Chief Historian she meticulously studies, gathers, and cares for the written substance of the Kingdom, and eagerly if distractedly promotes learning and respect for knowledge throughout the castle.Category:Characters Category:Daggerfall